The first thing catching the eye is that they are based on the same game engine (gamebryo). Yes I know Beth so exited to have new engine they call "creation engine", but we all know where the roots of this are. Discuss. That's a bit of interesting information I didn't know. After some testing in Rift, I had come to the conclusion that the black-screen/freeze issue is a bug in the engine/renderer. In Rift, I am able to recreate the issue 100% of the time in a certain area in the game world. Interestingly enough, I was able to eliminate the issue entirely when underclocking my GPU/VRAM beyond the default settings - seems some of you guys here have been messing with this with semi-successful results in Skyrim. Very interesting indeed... When I say underclock beyond default, I mean under the factory ATI set clock speeds for the GPU/VRAM on my 4890. So...lemme break it down. My OC settings, which have long tested stable (furmarked temp <62c, T-Rad2 heatsink w/2 x 80mm fans & VRM heatsinks) are 975 on the core, and 1125 mem. I edited my vbios w/RBE to save these clock speeds as default for 3d mode, with stock (unchanged) voltage. Has run everything I've ever thrown at it with no issues, including Crysis (1/2), World in Conflict, Battlefield Bad Co. 2, Battlefield 3, etc. I have furmarked for 4+ hours with these settings, as well as Prime95'd my CPU for 24h, ran Intel Burn Test, Memtest86+, OCCT, Gamma Cruncher, etc. etc. Point being, my hardware has all been rigorously tested and RE-tested, this configuration has been stable for nearly 2 years, no issues - built the PC myself, as with every system I've had the last 15 years, 7x 120mm fans in the case (2 are CPU fans; push-pull), nice and clean (fan filters) inside, yada yada yada...I'm not a noob, this isn't a friggin' Dell, and I do know how to troubleshoot hardware. The ATI default clock speeds for this card, as it is a reference ATI 4890, (ATI branded) are 850 mhz on GPU and 975 mhz memory clock. I was ONLY able to eliminate my black-screen issues in Rift - which we're re-creatable in at least one particular place, but seemingly random in other locations - by setting my GPU to 750 mhz (100 mhz down from default) and my VRAM to 875 mhz (again, 100 mhz down from stock ATI settings). Didn't matter if I cranked the graphic settings all the way down and used no overclock, it would crash no matter what until I took the gpu/memory speed well under factory settings. Well, it was either do that, or play with "Low Quality Renderer" mode enabled - which, as you may have guessed, makes everything look like complete garbage. But hey, with this mode enabled, I found that it wouldn't crash either.. :down: Point being, I found a couple workarounds in Rift that have proved (tested even!) to reliable stop the crashing - the real issue now is, why hasn't it been fixed? Trion has been aware of this problem for nearly 9 months and supposedly their "engineers" are still "working on the issue but it's been hard to track down." I fear the worst for you guys, being that Trion supposedly have been trying to fix this issue for 9 months. Lol, but do I really believe them? Hell nah. Their CS is dumb and I think they're just blowing us all off because not everyone has this problem. Like I told someone over on the Rift forum, 5% of 30,000 people at any given time is still 1,500 people. Just throwing numbers around but still...makes you think. I've been bitching about this on the Rift forum for months to no avail - 40+ Dxdiags later w/full instructions on how to recreate the bug apparently isn't enough. You can find my post over there here if you want to check it out. Enjoy perusing the other 100 page thread about the exact same issue. :geek: Considering Skyrim is a hugely popular game, maybe the extra attention on this issue will bring about a fix, once and for all...I really do hope so, but I'm not about to hold my breath. :unsure:
